Amma Asante is set to direct The Billion Dollar Spy for Walden Media and Akiva Goldsman's Weed Road Pictures, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.

Asante will helm the Cold War thriller of the same name by Pulitzer Prize-winner David E. Hoffman, which recounts the true-life tale of the CIA's most valuable Soviet spy and the disgruntled agent who betrayed him to the Russians.

Asante, a British writer-director, first earned a BAFTA Award for writing and directing 2004's Way of Life. Her subsequent films are 2013's Belle and 2016's A United Kingdom, which starred David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike.

A United Kingdom, penned by Guy Hibbert, was based on the true story of the forbidden love of King Seretse Khama of Botswana (Oyelowo) and Ruth Williams (Pike), a white woman from London, which caused an international uproar when they decided to marry in the late 1940s, just as apartheid was being introduced into South Africa.

Goldsman won an Academy Award for best adapted screenplay for the 2001 film A Beautiful Mind. The writer-produceralso wrote The Da Vinci Code and co-wrote Cinderella Man; I, Robot;and Angels & Demons.

Walden Media's credits include The Giver, Steven Spielberg's The BFG and A Dog's Purpose.